An Organizational Guide to Simone Weil’s “Reflections on the Good Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”
Sometimes in order to appreciate the trees one must first behold the specter of the forest, if only to get a sense of the grander scope of things. Thereafter, one can zoom in and better grasp the relationship between Weil’s words and her concepts. Furthermore, when one studies the structure of the essay, one better appreciates how Weil refines her thinking as her 1942 “Reflections” essay (38 paragraphs, 3,414 penned words) proceeds. Thus, the purpose of this Outline is not to preclude the importance of attentive reading but rather to buttress the value of such readings.
To better comprehend the scope of this essay, it would be salutary to consider Weil’s 1941 work titled “Essay on the Concept of Reading.”
The “School Studies” and “Reading” essays might well be viewed as one salutary way to approach Weil’s words and how to best begin to comprehend them, duly attentive to the orientation set out in those two essays. After all, the problem – and it is one! – of how best to read Weil’s works (where to begin and how to proceed?) is an important one that has received little or no attention. Given this, one should heed Weil’s words as set out in her 1941 essay:
“This is an attempt to define a concept that has not yet received an adequate name, for which the name reading would perhaps be appropriate. There is a mystery in reading, a mystery the contemplation of which can probably help not to explain, but to grasp other mysteries in the life of men.”
Something of that same “mystery” is at work in Weil’s “School Studies” essay, which helps to explain why it is a work rich with philosophical meanings.
Translation: The translation and paragraph numbering relied upon here are derived from “Simone Weil: Basic Writings”edited and translated by D.K. Levy & Marina Barabas (Routledge, 2023), pp. 225-232. Weil’s essay on reading is reproduced in ibid., pp. 143-149.
Origin of essay: “Father [Joseph Marie] Perrin had left Marseilles, having been given a mission at Montpellier. (It was because this put him into contact with students that Simone composed for him her ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies’.).” During the same month [April 1942], she also wrote “Forms of the Implicit Love of God.” In a letter to Mlle. Solange B., Weil asked that Solange send Father Perrin “the commentaries on the Pythagorean texts written at Casablanca; the ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies,’ which she had forgotten to give him before her departure [from Marseilles]; a translation of the dialogue between Electra and Orestes rediscovered among her papers and more complete than the one she had already given him; and no doubt also the notes on folklore, the extracts from the Egyptian and Chinese religious texts, and the ‘Note on the Primitive Relations of Christianity and non-Hebraic Religions,’ that is, the texts which Father Perrin later donated to the National Library.” {Simone Pétrement, “Simone Wei: A Life” (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), pp. 460, 462-463, 471.}
See also W. John Morgan, “Simone Weil’s ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God’: A Comment,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 398-409 (“The relationship between the spiritual and the pedagogic is insisted on throughout. Weil says from the outset that while school exercises develop only a lower kind of attention, they remain effective in increasing the capacity for prayer, but ‘…on condition that they are carried out with a view to this purpose and to this purpose alone.’”); and E. Jane Doering & Ruthann Knechel Johansen, “When Fiction and Philosophy Meet: A Conversation with Flannery O’Connor & Simone Weil” (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2019), pp. 67-85.
How to Procced — A Suggested Method: Once you have read Weil’s essay, slowly and duly mindful of its pedagogical counsel, consider the outline below so as to get a sense of the essay’s structure. Refer back to a passage or passages as needed.
Note: the following outline is not a substitute for reading the essay. Rather, consider it as a guide or map by which to better comprehend the breadth of its content.
______________________________________________________________________________
¶ 1: Christian conception of studies // prayer is made up of attention // attention, rather than warmth of heart, adds to quality of prayer
[Levels of Attention, How to Expand Attention, & Value of Investigation]
¶ 2: Only highest part of attention makes contact with God // must be intense and pure
¶¶ 3-4: School exercises // less elevated part of attention // increasing power of attention attention as prayer vs secondary interest of attention (“intrinsic interest”) // development of the faculty of attention = true goal and almost sole interest of school studies. {see also ¶¶ 7-8 below}
¶ 5: Students must learn to like all subjects since all expand attention which when oriented toward God = the substance of prayer {see also ¶ 11}
¶¶ 6-7: Value of investigation of a problem // effort is important even if solution not attained // a true effort of attention is never wasted: “always fully effective spiritually”
¶¶ 7-8: Different domains of intelligence: (i) “lower plane” {discursive attention} and (ii) “mysterious dimension” {intuitive attention} // unproductive and fruitless effort can bring light into soul {recall ¶ 8 above} // fruit of effort found in prayer is “certain”
¶ 9: Experimental certainties // contradiction // knowledge useful to “spiritual progress” // Faith = indispensable condition
[Role of Faith & Role of Desire]
¶ 10: Best support of faith // Eskimo tale // desire for light // value of useless effort
¶ 11: Desire is more important than outcomes // applying oneself equally to all exercises // “immediate goal” = wanting to complete an exercise correctly “deeper intention” = increasing power of attention with a view to prayer //writing shape of letters vs idea to be expressed {see also ¶¶ 17, 18 & 19}
[Conditions for Developing Attention / Value of Humility / Value of Failed Exercises]
¶ 12: Two conditions for developing attention: (i) improving the power of attention: the desire to pursue truth-the good and (ii) contemplating origins of one’s mistakes in thinking // avoid temptation of ignoring one’s mistakes
¶ 13: Virtue of humility // value of knowledge of ignorance // no knowledge is more desirable // “contemplation of one’s stupidity is perhaps more useful than even the contemplation of sin.”
¶ 14: Path to saintliness = satisfying two conditions {see ¶ 12 above}
¶¶ 15: Value of failed exercises // 1st and 2nd conditions distinguished {see ¶ 36 below}
[Attention Distinguished from Muscular Efforts & Willpower / Role of Desire]
¶¶ 16-17: Attention distinguished from muscular efforts // “muscular effort in studying is
completely unproductive” for spiritual purposes but “sometimes [can] be good
academically, from the perspective of grades and exams”
¶ 18: Willpower and desire contrasted // joy of learning = essential
¶ 19: Role of desire {see ¶ 11 above}
[Attention as a Negative Effort – Relation to Desire]
¶¶ 20-21: Attention as a negative effort // does not involve tiredness // if tired, disengage and then re-engage.
¶ 22: Difficult to maintain desire — soul recoils from true attention // that something is “closer to evil than is the flesh” // attention helps to destroy evil within oneself // can be “better than good works.”
[Attention: Suspending One’s Thinking – Open to Being Penetrated by Truth]
¶ 23: Attention defined // consists in suspending one’s thinking, in leaving it available, empty and penetrable to the object” // “ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.”{see ¶ 20 above}
¶ 24: Misinterpretations and absurd conclusions stem from hurried thinking // problem with being “active” vs thinking which should be available, “empty, waiting, seeking nothing // no better exercise // active efforts obstruct contact with truth. {see also ¶ 35 below}
[Value of Waiting: Method of Studying]
¶ 25: Value of waiting {see also ¶ 28 below}
¶ 26: Solution to a geometry problem = not a good in itself but an image of the good
¶ 27: School exercises understood as a kind of sacrament. {compare ¶ 38 below}
¶ 28: For every school exercise there is a specific way of waiting // a way of attention without looking for a solution. {see also ¶ 24 above}
¶ 29: First duty owed to school children: introduce them to this method of studying // inspiring a certain “posture of the intelligence”
[The Love of God and the Afflicted / Love of One’s Neighbor]
¶ 30: Attention and connection to master-slave relationship (properly understood) // condition of love = not enough // there must be a certain vigilance, an attending, some true attention.
¶ 31: Forming power of attention // school studies and manual labor // proximity to God: “if one considers the occupations in themselves,” school studies draw one “nearer.” Even so, they are both close to God though in different (“another”) way.
32: Love of God has attention as its substance – love of neighbor = of same substance // the afflicted need nothing else than one paying attention to them // such attention is very rare, very difficult — “a miracle.” {compare ¶ 27 above}
¶ ¶ 33-34: Legend of the Grail // miracle occurs when one asks the afflicted: “What grieves you?” // how to look at a particular person rather than as someone in “a collection”
¶ 35: “Fullness of love for another” occurs when one is attentive, when the soul empties itself. {see also ¶ 24 above}
[Paradox: Relation Between Attention and Helping the Afflicted / Spiritual Value]
¶ 36: Paradox: relation between attention re working on a Latin translation or geometry problem and helping the afflicted “save” themselves
¶ 37: “Spiritual efficacy” and “religious belief” distinguished
¶ 38: Importance of school studies, a “pearl” worth more than all else “keeping nothing for oneself.”
## ## ## ##
Recommend